Reaching Through The Particles
by Traveler Of Many Lands
Summary: AU. Molly Hooper is no ordinary person, and always has been that way. She is the girl who can stretch her fingers through the particles, reaching out to universes unknown to man, the girl who can exercise magical powers that most people can only dream of. When life throws challenges at her, Molly must find ways to stay standing in a world that pushes her down. See A/N inside.


_AU: Molly has magical abilities in a world where such abilities are usually unnoticed or hidden. Slight Sherlolly._

* * *

Ever since she was a small child, Molly Hooper knew that she was special, in a world that was often so unwelcoming and cold. Her parents told her that they would often watch as baby Molly sat up in her soft-pink crib and grasp at absolutely nothing, her tiny fists wafting in and out of visibility while she gurgled in excitement. Her parents had also said that Molly had learned to speak and read much earlier than most children. According to Mr. and Mrs. Hooper, it was as if she simply _pulled the words out of thin air._

As a toddler, Molly considered their words to merely be metaphorical, until she tried it herself and ended up expanding her vocabulary tenfold.

Mr. and Mrs. Hooper tried their best to conceal their daughter's unique ability from the rest of the world throughout Molly's childhood. After all, what would people think when they saw a five-year-old reaching her hands into an invisible universe for abilities that stretched light-years beyond their own?

Molly Hooper was blessed with the ability to see what others couldn't, to reach through the particles to places - no, _universes_ \- that others would consider as imaginary. When she felt like it, she could reach to a universe where she could be granted the ability to do magic, or shape-shift into anything at will, or be enlightened with knowledge that nobody else could grasp, or even find a word when she needed it.

This was no ordinary power. It was not restricting. Molly could play by her own rules with her ability, and she could summon a whole new skill whenever she wanted.

And when her mind got too crowded with skills, she could always let go of one to make room for more and come back again another day to get it.

None of the Hooper family knew anyone else with the ability to "reach through the particles," as Molly called it fondly. However, Molly reckoned that there were more people out there, waiting to be found.

By primary school, the Hoopers reckoned that Molly had the collective reading level of a post-graduate college student. But one look at the children trying to learn the alphabet in the first form made them realize that they needed to hide Molly's ability if they wanted her to live a relatively normal life.

Sadly, Molly bid farewell to all of the magical skills she'd picked up over the years and cleared her mind for new knowledge, solemnly swearing not to reach through the particles for any more skills until term was over.

And she would sit in class, bored out of her mind, while her peers all struggled in their infuriatingly mundane studies. Of course, her teachers noticed Molly's apparent ease in all of her studies and responded accordingly, challenging her mind with harder skills for her age.

But still, Molly finished everything with ease and grace, never complaining, never struggling. Magical, mysterious Molly with the brown eyes that sparkled merrily every time she reached out through the particles to another universe that only she could see and the reddish-brown braids that quivered with excitement whenever she discovered a new ability, a new skill.

Before long, Mr. and Mrs. Hooper felt the need to take Molly aside and lay out some guidelines for her.

"Mama? Da? Is there anything wrong?"

Molly, five and a half-years old, peered up at her parents inquisitively, slender fingers fidgeting in her lap, as if longing to reach through the particles and find a new universe.

Marci Hooper looked cautiously across the table at her husband Milo, receiving an encouraging nod from him. She looked back at her young daughter, hands folded solemnly.

"Da and I think…" she stopped to try and reassemble herself. "Well, Molly, your teachers have told us that you're doing very well in school."

Molly perked up happily, a small smile beginning to grace her young face.

" _Exceptionally_ well," Milo cut in.

Molly's smile faded. "And it's a bit too well for my age," she guessed sadly, drooping. "I know, Mama, Da...I'm sorry."

"There's nothing to be sorry for," Marci said quickly, pain flashing through her chest at how quickly Molly had guessed what they were here for. "Nothing at all, Molly."

"There's no need to apologize for success, Moll," Milo reassured their daughter gently.

"No...well, that I know, but I know I should try to cover up my ability more," Molly said guiltily. "I-I'll try to disguise it. A few missed problems here and there...it won't particularly hurt my academia, I don't think. Don't worry, Mama, Da. I've got it."

And with that, her grin returned to her face. "It'll be like being an undercover agent. That'll be fun!"

Marci and Milo looked at each other and tried to smile. Their magical little girl was learning very quickly.

 _Much_ too quickly for her to be a little girl any more.

As the years passed by, a short slip of a girl could be seen in the Hooper yard in the afternoons. Sometimes, she'd be on her back underneath the willow tree, hands reaching out into some invisible place, russet-brown waves all about her head. Or she'd be sitting among the grasses, sparks flying from her fingers. Sometimes, when nobody was around, Molly would be concentrating all her might into levitating off of the ground, eventually becoming powerful enough to reach the highest and most stable branch of the willow tree and then gently float back to the ground in complete safety.

Sometimes, a reddish-brown fox would be seen dashing about the yard, chasing butterflies in the spring.

Nobody but the Hooper family knew that that fox was Molly herself, enjoying the speed and agility of the animal as it blended with her own personality.

It was one day in summer that Molly tried manipulating the elements, beginning with water. She ended up creating a pond in a corner of the yard that hadn't been there before, and decided to try working with other substances. She found, through lengthy experimentation, that liquids worked best with her, and used it to her advantage.

In the summer, when drips of ice cream threatened to besiege her wrist, she would reach out through the particles into another universe with her other hand and summon the ability to control liquids. And just like that, when she extended her fingers to the melting treat, they re-joined the rest of its comrades, solidifying back into frozen treat.

In the winter, when the Hoopers went to visit some snowy place, Molly would will the snow to form itself into a sculpture that her family ooh-ed and ahh-ed over.

She would stand in the yard on intolerably hot and humid days and stand in a meteorological sphere of her own making, closing her eyes in utter bliss as breezes swirled around her gracefully, tossing her hair this way and that and making it shine.

In the dark of night, Molly would reach through the particles and come back with the ability to create her own, softly glowing pale pink light. By that light she would spend hours reading her books, slowly growing her personal garden of knowledge.

But at school, she had to put her magical wanderings on the shelf and instead let her fingers wander looking for knowledge. Books, words, math formulae, diagrams of the anatomy all called out to her quietly as she wandered the school library and perused the shelves of books.

One day, she was so intolerably bored as she tapped her foot quietly at her desk. The teacher was droning on and on and on and on and on about algebra and something Molly already knew about. A flash of inspiration suddenly occurred to her, and she slipped her left hand under her desk. Wiggling her fingers, she reached through the particles, looking for another universe she could lose herself in.

"Come _on_ ," she muttered quietly until she found a suitable universe and pushed her fingers inside.

When she slid her hand back up to her line of vision, she could faintly smell a trace of chocolate. And in her desk at the back of the room, she smiled softly and closed the hand on a broken pencil underneath the desk again.

When she brought it back up to desk level, she was pleased to find that the pencil had entirely turned into soft, pleasant chocolate.

She broke off a small piece and was satisfied to find that it made no sound at all as she palmed it and pretended to cough while slipping the chocolate into her mouth.

As the boy in front of her turned around, Molly slipped the pencil into her bag to conceal it and pretended nothing had happened.

The boy raised a single eyebrow at her and smiled, pale stormy eyes glittering playfully underneath his dark mop of curls. Molly felt a swoop of something in her stomach as he let a hand drop to his side and his slender fingers grasp at something she couldn't see and then come back to touch a notebook in the boy's backpack, which subsequently turned into chocolate.

She couldn't help but smile at finding a kindred spirit. Unfortunately, she didn't get his name when he left, and she was too shy to even ask it in the first place.

And unfortunately, she found that as time passed on and she maintained her position at the very top of the class and her position every end-of-term among the honor roll students, the children grew crueler.

 _Teacher's pet! Weirdo! Cheater! Liar! Witch!_

Molly's fingers would slowly wiggle out, when she was older and got pressed up against the school wall by the crush of maliciously laughing bullies, and she'd try and try and try and try to reach an alternate universe, to seek out the ability to burst out of the crush of children, miraculously triumphant. But she was too flustered, too scared, and she could barely manage an inch or two of levitation before being slammed against the wall again.

And when she'd come home with scratches and bruises, her parents would look at each other when Molly was out of the room and shake their heads sadly, and do their best to comfort their daughter and each other.

When Molly was older and encountered her very first love interest, she could only describe it as a sensation akin to finding a new universe. Sparks flew from her fingers and she tried her best not to electrocute the poor boy. They'd had a summer of pure bliss, talking among the grasses, comparing books, climbing the trees, until the boy had to move away, back to somewhere in the north.

Molly found solace in the words and formulae and diagrams that called out to her, out of textbooks and math workbooks, out of thick books on the anatomy and medical journals. When, at sixteen, she told her parents of her wish to enter the medical field, they weren't surprised. Marci had uncovered medical and psychology journals underneath Molly's bed for years. Milo had always enjoyed the lively discussions about his life as a general practitioner that he'd had with Molly.

When Milo Hooper died, Molly nearly couldn't keep it in.

Her searching, fidgeting fingers found a universe that she'd never wanted to find before. For months after her father died, every step that she took on the garden paths would make the flowers wither and die, dejected, on the ground. Birds would frantically build their nests away from the Hooper willow tree for the whole time.

When Molly woke up from a fitful sleep one day and found that her room's corners were filled with dead spiders, the sunflowe

rs on her desk had wilted into oblivion, and she could no longer hear the birds singing, she realized exactly what she had done.

And so, she cast her magic to the winds, stored it away for the future, and threw herself headlong into her studies.

She worked hard, searched for new knowledge in new universes, and through it all, she kept the flame of her father's memory alive and flickering, in the deepest recesses of her heart.

Molly Hooper looked like a vulnerable, sweet woman on the outside, but she knew she had power that absolutely nobody could match. A power that openly defied both the limits of logical thinking and the unfathomable expanse of the world of magic, a power that she, the great and mighty Molly, could wield with ease and grace. A power that was all Molly, all her own.

She eventually was accepted as a pathologist at Bart's in London. When she got the news with her mother, Marci Hooper turned to her daughter and said softly said, "Your father is so proud of you. I know it."

Molly moved to London to pursue her aspirations and dreams. Her fingers couldn't stop sparking with pure excitement.

She moved into a nice flat, bought a cat, and settled down. (Once, she tried to find a universe where she could get the ability to talk to her cat. To her amusement, she found one.)

It was nearly the tenth anniversary of Milo Hooper's death that Molly Hooper met Sherlock Holmes. The meeting wasn't as friendly as she would have wanted it, but given the circumstances, it was what would inevitably happen, what with that utter jerk by the name of Sherlock Bloody Holmes.

Molly was working in a lab, one hand flipping the pages of a textbook and the other trying to collect a spilled substance from when her elbow had knocked over a graduated cylinder.

She averted her attention from the book and let one slender index finger wave over the liquid in a spiral motion, remembering the elemental magic she'd do as a child. The substance stopped flowing away, quivered noticeably, and shot into the graduated cylinder. As the liquid settled in the cylinder, Molly caught it and set it back on the counter.

"Intriguing," a deep voice remarked from above her.

Molly's defense instincts kicked in. In a flash, she plunged a hand into the nearest available universe and found herself with a surge of superhuman power that she never even thought was possible. Swinging around in a quick, smooth motion, she blindly struck out at the source of the voice, agile and fast like the fox she would transform into as a child. She hazily saw the intruder yell in shock and dodge her right hook, but-

 _WHAM_!

Molly's blow hit home, landing on the man's left cheekbone with a satisfying _crack_. Bluntly, she assessed the damage. The man in front of her didn't seem seriously injured, his worst wounds being to his pride. He had cheekbones that could rightly cut paper, eyes that matched the color of the storms Molly could conjure at a moment's notice, and a mop of black curls that startlingly contrasted with his pale skin. Wryly, Molly wondered, _Is he anemic, or what?_

"Ouch," the man complained, rubbing his face indignantly. "For a little slip like you, that hurt."

"For an egotistical idiot who had the nerve to sneak up on me in my own lab like that, you deserved it," Molly retorted. "The most that that will do to you is to wound your pride, so don't worry about your Michelangelo sculpture of a face."

The wiry man stood over her, tall, imposing, _utterly handsome but such a jerk._ His mouth gaped open in obvious surprise. Molly felt a small hint of satisfying warmth spread through her cheeks at his intense visual inspection of her. She desperately wanted to back down, but the strength she had pulled out of the random universe she had sought out on an impulse forbade her from doing so.

"You'll do nicely. Allow me: I am Sherlock Holmes," the man introduced himself grandly, sticking out a hand for Molly to shake. "Consulting detective, only one in the world."

Molly eyed his hand in slight disgust. _Who is he to just stand here and have me shake his hand like he's some big person, someone I should fawn over? He's probably expecting me to shake in my shoes, to waver underneath his unflinching gaze, beg for mercy on my knees, respect him like he belongs on the highest throne! Sherlock Holmes, eh? I'll show you who's the bigger person here, smartarse!_

Molly gathered her things in a single, swift movement and marched past the offending hand. Right before walking out of the door, she whipped around and addressed Sherlock on a whim she'd had.

"Even if you are sitting on the highest throne in the world, you mustn't forget that you're also sitting on your own -" Molly stopped her heated tirade, took a deep breath, and started again. "I would have thought that a graduate chemist would think better than to interrupt a fellow scientist working with a potentially hazardous substance," she said dryly. "The next time you do that to me, you'll be experiencing pain in a whole different area than today," she threatened, voice quivering despite herself. Whirling around on her heel, she marched off haughtily, chin high and heart pounding fit to burst in her chest.

"You're Molly. Molly Hooper, right?" she heard Sherlock yell behind her, from the lab she'd just stormed out of.

But she didn't even bother to reply.

Time passed, and Molly was dismayed to find that she was growing more and more attracted to the consulting detective, who would come around some days to examine the bodies in Molly's morgue or do experiments with her. Subtly, she tried to express this to him in as many ways as possible.

But every time, she failed.

And every time, she would find comfort in knowing that she could choose to have utter power and control over the most brilliant man in England. She had power that made even Sherlock Holmes look like an unimportant bug next to her, the great, the indefatigable Molly Hooper.

Nobody ever approached her about her powers, not even Stamford, not even Sherlock's slightly creepy older brother who was apparently monitoring her every move due to her connections with Sherlock, not even John, not even Scotland Yard. Not even Sherlock himself, even though Molly had used her power right in front of his eyes.

 _This is one weird universe that I live in,_ she thought.

And then in that dark lab, the instruments casting shadows over the counters, the books all put away in their respective places, Sherlock told Molly that she was the one he needed. She was the one that Sherlock would entrust to help him die.

For the first time in a while, she felt afraid. No matter what she could do, her magic had its limits. She only had one try to get Sherlock out alive. One go, and that was all. And then, she had to let fate play itself out.

She was totally, utterly scared of indirectly and actually killing the man she'd punched when they'd first met. The man who would stay until the early hours of morning performing experiments on body parts and pathogens and whatnot. The man she'd accidentally come to love and hate at the exact same time.

She could have thrown away her shot right then and there.

But she vowed, _I will not throw away my shot._

 _I will not throw away my shot!_

And she did not.

Sherlock successfully faked his death and lived to tell the tale.

Sharing tea in the morgue afterwards, waiting for the moment when they would have to part, the two reminisced on notable experiments performed, lessons learned, and friends made. Sherlock talked about his cases and Molly talked about her autopsies.

They didn't talk about the impending separation that was to come, or _Lazarus_ , or Moriarty. And whenever they got close, Molly would steer them away.

Later, as Sherlock glanced out of the window, he noticed something and pointed it out to Molly.

An unmarked, black car, ready to take Sherlock away.

Molly knew it was time.

Perhaps she would never have the opportunity to tell Sherlock about her real feelings for him.

Molly sighed sadly, dejectedly looking down at her shoes.

"You do know," Sherlock said suddenly, hoarsely, haltingly, nervously. Sherlock is never nervous, Molly thought disbelievingly. "I've wanted to tell you this for a long time. E-ever since I-I met you, in fact. Well, more like show you…" He trailed off, wringing his hands. The mere action was so un-Sherlock that Molly felt the urge to giggle. She settled for a quirk of her mouth. Somehow she knew that this was serious.

"Are you ready?" Sherlock asked, dragging her back to reality.

Molly nodded silently.

Sherlock took a deep breath and stretched his hand out. Slowly, bit by bit, his hand disappeared. Molly's jaw dropped as she realized he was reaching through the particles into his own universe. Just like me, she couldn't help but realize. His hand came back, and in front of her, Sherlock conjured a single golden flower.

"Garden magic seems to be my specialty," he murmured, gently slipping the flower behind Molly's ear. "Just like liquid controlling magic seems to be for you. But...I think your powers may be much more stronger than mine."

"Oh," Molly gasped and looked into Sherlock's face. "Oh my. I...I never thought I'd find someone like me," she said softly, feeling a shudder pass through her body.

"It's snowing, Molly," Sherlock observed quietly.

Sure enough, Molly's emotions had triggered a small snowstorm, making snow settle on both Molly's and Sherlock's heads. With a wave of her hand, the storm dispelled.

Sherlock and Molly brushed the snow off of each other's heads before Sherlock gave her a gentle kiss on her forehead and led her downstairs to the car, where they bid their farewells to each other.

It would be two years before their powers would unite again, but for the time being, Molly only had a feeling of sadness mixed with happiness mixing deep in her heart.

But all in all, she was still magical Molly, reaching through the particles to places yet to be found with the human eye, conjuring up impossibilities, playing by her own rules.

And she would always be, forever and always, until the last syllable of recorded time.

* * *

 _Hello hello hello, it's Rielle here! Back with a new oneshot (dare I say it) for the first time...in forever? For me, school is out, so I will have more opportunities to do new things and finish up old ones. I'm working on some new Cabin Pressure fics, as well as some more Sherlolly AUs. A crossover between Sherlock and Cabin Pressure is currently undergoing discussion and deliberation, so stay tuned. For now, I hope you thoroughly enjoyed this, and please let me know what you think. This isn't really how I usually write, so I want to know how I've done! Thanks!_

 _Always,_

 _Rielle_


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